The Final Gambit

“This is who I want to be,” Jameson said, his voice hoarse, “for you.”

“I love you. I would die to protect you. I would make you hate me to keep you safe because damn it, Avery—some things are too precious to gamble.”

“That’s my girl!” Xander bellowed.

“Woman,” Max corrected.

“That’s my woman! In a completely not possessive and absolutely unpatriarchal kind of way!”

Max lifted her glass to toast him. “Elf yeah.”

“The world is like that, you know.” The woman oriented back toward Eve, sounding more maternal. “You have to learn to take what you want—and never, ever let someone take what you don’t want to give.”

I saw Grayson poised in front of open bay windows, wearing a suit without the jacket, his shirt unbuttoned, a violin pressed to his chin. His posture was perfect, each movement smooth.

The floor in front of him was covered with shards of wood.

I couldn’t remember how many ultra-expensive violins Tobias Hawthorne had purchased in pursuit of cultivating his grandson’s musical ability, but it looked like Grayson had destroyed at least one.

The song reached a final note, so high and sweet it was almost unbearable.

I expected him to look away, but he didn’t. Silvery gray eyes stayed locked on mine, never blinking, never wavering. “Everything hurts.” Only Grayson Hawthorne could say that and still sound utterly bulletproof. “It hurts all the time, Avery, but I know the man I was raised to be.”

“But Eve isn’t weak. She hasn’t lied to us. She hasn’t asked for a damn thing except help finding the one person in this world who sees her for who she is.”

“But Eve isn’t weak. She hasn’t lied to us. She hasn’t asked for a damn thing except help finding the one person in this world who sees her for who she is.”

But Eve isn’t weak. She hasn’t lied to us. She hasn’t asked for a damn thing except help finding the one person in this world who sees her for who she is.”

“How do you steer?” I asked Jameson as everything but the two of us and my very discreet bodyguard got smaller and farther away.

“You don’t.” Jameson’s arms curved around my torso. “Sometimes, Heiress, all you can do is recognize which way the wind is blowing and plot a course.”